Short answer. PerkClub and Square Loyalty are different categories of product. Square Loyalty is a points-based add-on for businesses already running Square POS in the UK — customers earn points after a sale and redeem them on a future visit. PerkClub is a POS-agnostic, white-label subscription platform that books recurring monthly revenue under your café's own brand. Pick Square Loyalty if you're committed to the Square ecosystem and want a simple bolt-on points programme. Pick PerkClub if you want booked monthly cashflow, a wallet pass instead of an app, and the freedom to run any till you like.
Different categories of product
Square Loyalty is a feature inside the Square ecosystem. It's only available to businesses already using Square POS as their till, and it adds a points-per-pound mechanic on top of standard Square transactions. The customer identifies themselves at checkout — usually by phone number — and points accrue automatically on each sale. Rewards are redeemed on a future visit.
PerkClub is a paid recurring-membership platform. The customer signs up to your café's club through a branded landing page, pays you monthly through Stripe, and downloads a wallet pass to Apple or Google Wallet. The platform doesn't care which till you use. The mechanic is contractual — the customer has paid you for an ongoing perk, not earned points after the fact.
Pricing: a Square subscription tier vs a flat platform fee
Square publishes Square Loyalty as a tiered per-location subscription, billed on top of standard Square processing fees. UK pricing typically starts in the £40–£60/month band per location for the entry tier and rises with feature scope and active reward visits. Card processing remains at Square's standard rate.
PerkClub charges a flat monthly platform fee plus standard Stripe processing on what you bill your members. The fee is independent of how many members you have or how many locations you run. There is no per-location stack-up, because PerkClub is not tied to a till at all. See the PerkClub pricing page for the current figure.
The cost question that actually matters isn't sticker price. It's revenue impact. Square Loyalty's points lift visit frequency by a few percent for engaged customers — useful, but it never books revenue in advance. A successful PerkClub subscription with 100 members at £25/month books £30,000 a year. Different orders of magnitude, different problems solved.
The lock-in question: ecosystem vs portability
Square Loyalty's structural constraint is that it only works inside Square. If you decide you want to leave Square POS — for example, switching to a sector-specific till like Toast, Lightspeed Hospitality or Epos Now — you lose Square Loyalty along with the till. Your customer database, points balances and reward history are tied to the Square account, not portable to wherever you go next.
PerkClub does not have that constraint. The membership lives in Stripe and in Apple or Google Wallet, neither of which depends on your POS. Move your till tomorrow and PerkClub keeps running. Cancel Square and your members are unaffected. For UK independents who have already changed POS once and don't fancy doing it again to fix loyalty, that portability is meaningful.
There's also a customer-facing lock-in worth naming. Square Loyalty's points expire — typical configurations time them out after 12 months of inactivity, sometimes shorter. Customers complain about this whenever they discover a balance has vanished. PerkClub members don't accrue anything that can expire; they pay monthly and use their perk monthly, full stop.
Wallet pass vs app vs phone number
Customer-facing UX is where Square Loyalty's age shows. The classic flow is "give me your phone number" at the till, which slows the queue and trains customers to feel surveilled. The Square mobile app exists for customers to track points, but uptake is low — most customers never download it.
PerkClub members carry a wallet pass — a tile in Apple or Google Wallet, sitting next to bank cards. No app to download, no phone number to remember, no friction at redemption. The customer taps "show pass", staff scan the QR, the perk is redeemed. The pass updates automatically when their billing renews. For UK independents serving morning rush, the queue-time difference is real.
When Square Loyalty is genuinely the right pick
Be honest about scenarios where Square Loyalty wins. If you are already running Square POS, want minimum-effort loyalty, are happy with a points-based mechanic, and don't need recurring revenue, Square Loyalty is the cheapest path to a working programme. The integration is one-click, the customer database overlaps with your Square sales data, and reporting sits in the same dashboard as your sales reports. For a single-site Square user with modest ambitions, that is a genuine win.
PerkClub is the wrong tool for "I want a basic points programme on Square." It would be over-engineering.
Why a UK independent should choose PerkClub for recurring revenue
If your problem is structural cashflow — you need to book a portion of your monthly revenue before customers walk in, you need to insulate against the seasonal trough that hits every UK café in January and February, and you want the customer relationship to live in your brand rather than a Square account — Square Loyalty does not solve that. It cannot. The points mechanic is retroactive by definition.
PerkClub is the platform built for that exact job. White-label, POS-agnostic, wallet-first, and priced flat — it sells subscriptions under your café's name, not Square's. Many UK cafés run both: Square at the till, PerkClub as the membership rail. They don't conflict because they're solving different problems.
For a fuller treatment of subscription vs points economics, see subscription vs stamp card vs points.
Bottom line
If you're a Square user who wants simple points, Square Loyalty is fine. If you want booked recurring revenue under your own brand, PerkClub is. If you'd like to talk through which fits your café, the PerkClub team is happy to walk through your numbers.
